The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
Thomas R. Bruce co-founded the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School in 1992 with Peter Martin and currently serves as the Director of the organization. He is the author of Cello, the first Web browser for Microsoft Windows. Cello was released on 8 June 1993.-External links:* at the *...
The Legal Information Institute is a non-profit, public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online at . The organization is a pioneer in the delivery of legal information online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and...
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...
browsers. It was reported that it worked without any problems on Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.5 is the second release of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It was released on 21 September 1994.One of the primary goals during Windows NT 3.5's development was to increase the speed of the operating system; as a result, the project was given the codename "Daytona" in...
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
.
Cello was created because, at the time, lawyers used Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
on their computers, but the web browsers available at the time were mostly for Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s. This meant many legal experts were unable to access legal information made available in hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. Cello was popular during 1993/1994, but fell out of favor following the release of Mosaic
Mosaic (web browser)
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
, during which development was abandoned.You can view yahoo browser statistics at http://web.archive.org/web/20021204042351/http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/~ejk/bryl/ which show Cello being used.
Cello was first publicly released on June 8, 1993. Although a version 2.0 had been announced, development was abandoned prior to a public release leaving version 1.01a, released on April 16, 1994, to be the last version. Since then, the Legal Information Institute
Legal Information Institute
The Legal Information Institute is a non-profit, public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online at . The organization is a pioneer in the delivery of legal information online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and...
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...
has licensed out the Cello 2.0 source code which has been used to develop commercial software
Commercial software
Commercial software, or less commonly, payware, is computer software that is produced for sale or that serves commercial purposes.Commercial software is most often proprietary software, but free software packages may also be commercial software....
.
The browser is no longer available from its original homepage.The original cello site at http://www.law.cornell.edu/cello/cellotop.html is no longer up. The original ftp site at ftp://ftp.law.cornell.edu/pub/LII/Cello is no longer up. The original gopher server at gopher.law.cornell.edu:70/11/listservs/cellol/ is no longer up. However, it can still be downloaded from mirror sites.Cello can still be downloaded at http://browsers.evolt.org/?cello/ .
Development and history
The development for Cello started 1992 with beta versions planned for June 1993 and a release for July 1993. It was publicly announced on April 12, 1993.
The Legal Information Institute is a non-profit, public service of Cornell Law School that provides no-cost access to current American and international legal research sources online at . The organization is a pioneer in the delivery of legal information online. Founded in 1992 by Peter Martin and...
Cornell Law School, located in Ithaca, New York, is a graduate school of Cornell University and one of the five Ivy League law schools. The school confers three law degrees...
created the first law site on the
Internet in 1992 and the first legal website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
in 1993. However, at the time, there were no web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system, which was used by most lawyers. Thus, to allow lawyers to use their website, the Legal Information Institute developed the first Windows-based Web browser. This was made possible by a grant from the National Center for Automated Information Research.This can be seen in the "About Cello" dialog in Cello. It is also stated in the "Notices, Acknowledgments, Disclaimers" section of the included .hlp file in Cello.
Although other browsers at the time were based on CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
libwww is a highly-modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows, and is also the name of the reference implementation of this API....
, PCs of the time were not powerful enough to run the UNIX-oriented code. As a result, Thomas Bruce had to rewrite most of the WWW libraries to work on Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. It should also be noted that unlike most commercial browsers at that time, Cello didn't utilize any of Mosaic
Mosaic (web browser)
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
's source code and thus had a different look and feel.
Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division at Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
wrote in a June 1994 email: We do not currently plan on any other client software [in the upcoming release of Windows 95], especially something like Mosaic or Cello. Nonetheless, on January 11, 1995, Microsoft announced that it had licensed the Mosaic technology from Spyglass, which it would use to create Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Internet Explorer 1.0 is a graphical web browser that made its debut from Microsoft on August 16, 1995. It was a reworked version of Spyglass Mosaic which Microsoft had licensed, like many other companies initiating browser development, from Spyglass Inc. It came with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95...
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
. While it did not ship with the original release of Windows 95, it shipped with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95.
Usage
When released in 1993, Cello was the only browser for the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
platform. Shortly after launch, Cello was being downloaded at a rate of 500 copies per day. As such, it achieved a fair amount of use and recognition within the legal community, including a number of PC users with between 150,000 to 200,000 users. In 1994, most websites were visited using either the Cello browser or the Mosaic browser. Despite having fewer features than Mosaic, Cello continued to be used due to its simpler interface and lower system requirements. Cello was praised for being easily to install, because it isn't needed to install Win32s
Win32s
Win32s is a 32-bit application runtime environment for the Microsoft Windows 3.1 and 3.11 operating systems. It allowed some 32-bit applications to run on the 16-bit operating system using call thunks.- Concept and Characteristics :...
or a TCP/IP stack for Windows 3.1, although not being the best browser. Following the release of Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
, which offered a much better TCP/IP interface, Cello fell into disuse and was abandoned.
By 1995, Cello, like the Mosaic browser, was overshadowed by two newer browsers: Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
and Internet Explorer and fell into disuse. By 1999, Cello was considered to be a "historical" browser.
Cello is considered to be one of the early casualties of the First Browser War.
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
, Cello did not have toolbar buttons, and instead commands were accessed through pull-down menus.
Supported Protocols
Cello supported the following protocols: HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....
Gopher+ is a forward compatible enhancement to the RFC [ftp://ftp.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt 1436] Gopher protocol. Gopher+ works by sending extra data between the client and the server.-How it works:...
File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for electronic mail transmission across Internet Protocol networks. SMTP was first defined by RFC 821 , and last updated by RFC 5321 which includes the extended SMTP additions, and is the protocol in widespread use today...
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
A CCSO name-server or Ph protocol was an early form of database search on the web. In its most common form it was used to look up information such as phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Today this service has been largely replaced by LDAP. It was used mainly in the early-to-middle 1990s...
Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" to search index databases on remote computers...
-History:HyTelnet was an early attempt to create a universal or at least simpler interface for the various Telnet-based information resources available before the World Wide Web. It was first developed in 1990 by Peter Scott, then at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada...
Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet search engine. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and J...
X.500 is a series of computer networking standards covering electronic directory services. The X.500 series was developed by ITU-T, formerly known as CCITT, and first approved in 1988. The directory services were developed in order to support the requirements of X.400 electronic mail exchange and...
, TN3270 and a number of others through public gateways.
Supported FTP servers
Cello supported the following FTP servers: most Unix servers(including SunOS, System V, and Linux),IBM VM, IBM VM, VMS systems, Windows NT, QVTNet, NCSA/CUTCP/Rutgers PC servers,FTP Software PC server, HellSoft NLM for Novell.
Internet Connection
Cello works best with a direct Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
The Serial Line Internet Protocol is an encapsulation of the Internet Protocol designed to work over serial ports and modem connections. It is documented in RFC 1055...
In networking, the Point-to-Point Protocol is a data link protocol commonly used in establishing a direct connection between two networking nodes...
dialup connections through the use of asynchronous sockets. Cello has an integrated TCP/IP
Internet protocol suite
The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP from its most important protocols: Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol , which were the first networking protocols defined in this...
Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
Win
Win
Win
Win
Win
Win
OS/2
Version
1
2.4
.20-alpha 3
1
1.02
3.06
Beta 4
1.67
0.91
proxy
extended html
Performance
multithreading
dynamic linking
deferred image
multi-pane
multi-window
Configurability
kiosk mode
external players
Integration
d&d to clipboard
spawnable players
search engine(Find)
Navigation
hotlist
bookmark
folders
categories (tags)
menu/button bar
import
export
annotation
auto time stamp
Source:
Derivatives
The first edition of BURKS, a project to produce non-profit CD-ROMs of resources for students of Computer Science was based on Cello.
InterAp, by California Software Inc, was based on Cello and featured a web browser with Telnet, FTP, and a visual basic compatible scripting language called NetScripts.
A version of Lovelace came integrated with Cello.
Technical
While originally Cello required the Distinct runtime stack, following the release of Cello Beta Version .8, Cello dropped support for Distinc, and became exclusively Winsock
Winsock
In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...
had bugs that prevented Cello from accessing the Internet. The bug, APAR #PN52335, was later fixed allowing Cello to properly work on OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
macro.
Sub MAIN
ChanNum = DDEInitiate("Cello", "URL")
DDEExecute(ChanNum, "http://www.law.cornell.edu")
DDETerminate(ChanNum)
End Sub
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
The Intel 80386, also known as the i386, or just 386, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time...
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
Windows NT 3.5 is the second release of the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. It was released on 21 September 1994.One of the primary goals during Windows NT 3.5's development was to increase the speed of the operating system; as a result, the project was given the codename "Daytona" in...
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...
In computing, the Windows Sockets API , which was later shortened to Winsock, is a technical specification that defines how Windows network software should access network services, especially TCP/IP. It defines a standard interface between a Windows TCP/IP client application and the underlying...
Criticism
Cello was not very stable and its development halted early.
Cello did not render graphics well and required that the user reload the webpage when resizing the window. Like most browsers at the time, Cello also did not support any web security protocols. It was also said that Cello rendered html "crudely" and pages would appear jaggedly.
Cello also had sub-par performance in accessing the Internet and processing hypermedia documents.
